14 MARCH 1947, Page 18

AMONG a multitude of accounts and personal experiences of feeding

birds in dines of frost the most original and perhaps successful conies • from Cornwall. Expeditions were made for the hunting of snails in . the crevices of stone walls, and the booty was extensive. It might ER :even more successful and certainly more useful if similar searches wele made in gardens. Is there any hibernaculum quite so crowded witb undesirable lodgers as a clipped box-hedge round a bed or knot gard6,

• or, say, a clump of Algerian iris? No birds so specialise on a *t of snails as the thrushes ; and these birds, of any species, are particularly vulnerable to frost. Thrushes have been killed by our long February frost, as, alas, I have seen, while the blackbirds, which are very numerous, have continued to look even more than usually perky. They are both hardier and have a more catholic appetite than the song thrushes: With me they devour to the last scrap any rotting apple that is thrown out; and the Bramleys and Scotch Bridgets are both on their last legs. .*